The Finding of the Infant Moses

The Finding of Moses is among the finest of the Roman painter Michele Rocca’s small-scale canvases of mythological and religious subjects, which made his reputation. Here, Rocca ennobles the landscape by situating a well-known Biblical story within it. With its broad, animated brush strokes and dramatically contrasting light effects—spotlighting the central figures as if they are on a stage—Rocca’s painting does not suggest direct observation of a particular place. Though the artist is not known to have traveled to France, his expressive brushwork bears affinities with the fashionable and sensual French Rococo, to which he would have been exposed through contacts with French artists living in Rome in the early eighteenth century.